we could do to beat
them off, and more or less seriously injuring three seamen and two of
the male emigrants. This little experience taught us all a much-needed
lesson in prudence; for it was more by luck than good management that we
avoided capture and the general massacre that would most assuredly have
followed.

For the next five weeks we cruised among these islands, vainly seeking
the earthly paradise that Wilde had taught all hands to expect, and with
less than which none of them would be satisfied. For such islands as
seemed to approach Wilde's standard in the matter of size and fertility
were already inhabited, and that, too, for the most part, by natives
whose pressing invitations to land, and lavishly proffered hospitality,
we had learned to regard with something more than suspicion; while the
uninhabited islands were invariably found to be wholly lacking in some
essential feature.

Then, leaving the Carolines behind us, we passed on to the Marshall
group, where the atoll--which we had already encountered in a somewhat
modified form here and there among the Carolines--was to be found in its
typically perfect development. Here the islands, such as they were,
were entirely of coral formation, of diminutive area, generally not more
than six or eight feet above the surface of the ocean, their vegetation
consisting of a few coconut trees, with, maybe, a patch or two of coarse
grass here and there, and possibly a few stunted bushes, the whole
constituting a more or less irregularly shaped belt enclosing a
saltwater lagoon, usually with an entrance from the open sea, and with
water enough inside to float a ship; but sometimes with no entrance at
all. A fortnight among these atolls sufficed to convince the most
optimistic among us that what we were looking for was not to be found in
that neighbourhood. Accordingly we bade farewell to the group, to my
intense relief, for, between the shoals and the currents, I was worried
very nearly into a fever, and scarcely dared to leave the deck day or
night.

Once clear of the Marshall Islands, we stood away to the northward,
gradually hauling round, as the wind favoured us, to about west-nor'-
west, occasionally sighting a small island, but more frequently broken
water, until at length, when we had been out from the Marshall group
close upon three weeks, land was made at daybreak, bearing two points on
the lee bow. It was at a considerable distance, for it showed soft an